Thorne's Last Mission
by artemisianfire
Summary: Carswell Thorne is employed by famous investor Levana Blackburn to kill her hacker.
1. Chapter 1

Carswell Thorne was a criminal mastermind—New York's best kept secret. He was the king of the streets. He controlled all the best thefts, break-ins, crimes. He piloted New York under his pinky finger. He could do anything.

Or so he thought.

Thorne crossed his arms. "You're saying that you want me to execute a _murder?_ "

The woman in front of him narrowed her dark brown eyes. Levana Blackburn was a famous investor/businesswoman, and her appearance didn't deny it. With her hair swept back into a tight bun and her clothes adorned with stylish add-ons, even Thorne felt unattractive sitting beside her. That was not to say he was unnerved, though. Captain Thorne could handle anything.

Just not murders.

"Are you saying you're not up for it?" Blackburn extended one long arm and tapped at the tablet installed in the table, her fingers dancing with the stylus. "I can find other…ruffians, too." The screen pulled up a long list of criminals. Thorne knew all of them, and it didn't make him feel any better to see he wasn't so important in Levana's eyes.

"I'm up for it," he drawled, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded behind his head. "Just not so sure you're being reasonable."

"There's money involved."

Thorne smirked. "There's always money involved, sweetheart."

Levana glanced coldly at him before turning back to the table. Thorne gulped. _Aces_ , those eyes could freeze up the whole room.

"I want you to gain this girl's trust," Blackburn began, tapping something on the table. A spinwheel indicated that it was loading her information. She reached for the cup of tea sitting by her elbow, scrutinizing him over the rim. "And, from what I've heard, you're fairly good with ladies. I am positive this girl will be absolutely smitten with you."

Thorne plastered a smile on his face, leaning forward and taking a sip of his black coffee. "No objection here."

"From then, you'll convince her to break into the security of a bank vault. She'll then electronically extract the money into my account, leaving no traces behind, and hiding all signs there was ever a system break-in."

"Sneaky." Thorne nodded. "I can respect that. Although, I'd like to be able to boost my street cred—"

"This heist must remain a secret."

Carswell shrugged. His value was already high enough, anyways. "Noted."

"Then, you'll kill her." Blackburn's eyes glinted at the words, and Thorne felt a prickling sense of wrongness in his chest. "Crescent Moon has been disobeying my orders lately. I do not tolerate rebellious children."

Stars. This Levana person was really serious about her stuff.

Not to mention that she was a successful investor who secretly got her money from bank robberies instead.

Well, at least that rumor was true.

"Wait, hold on," Thorne cut in, a hand out to stop the conversation in its tracks. "A kid? You want me to kill a kid?"

"She is sixteen."

"Same difference. A kid, then." He felt the prickling feeling growing in his chest. "That's not right."

Levana's cold gaze bore into him. "Are you telling your client what is right or wrong?"

"Aces. You're right, okay? Just, uh—"He held his breath, dreading what was coming next,"why, exactly, do you want her dead?"

"She has been disobeying my orders."

"I know, but…" Thorne gulped, licking his lips nervously. "That seems a bit harsh, doesn't it? Maybe just a bit?"

The cold glare turned back to him. This time, it felt like it was boring into his own, like she was poking needles into his flesh.

Thorne swallowed, his throat dry.

"Okay, okay, I got it! No questioning orders, okay? I'll do it." Thorne jumped out of his chair, the legs skidding over the floor. "Just… Don't do that again."

The ice cold gaze softened, and Levana set down her tea with a satisfied air, like a day deemed productive. "I will send you the coordinates when you have prepared yourself."

Thorne couldn't get out of the mansion fast enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Ever since she was little, Cress had yearned to leave her RV and explore the world. She had a trailer. She had food. What was stopping her from driving out of these godforsaken woods and doing what she'd always dreamed of?

Levana Blackburn.

Okay, it was more the walls that stopped Cress. And the laser detectors, if she ever got any further. But she could break into those, and in the end Levana was the one controlling everything. Trapping her here to no end.

When she was younger, she couldn't understand why. She had tried climbing over the walls, taking tree vines and draping them over the edge.

(They were poison ivy.)

When she had grown older, Cress had come to accept it _. Look on the bright side_ , she would always think to herself. _Someday, my prince will come_. And he'd sweep her off her feet and help her escape and they'd live the rest of their lives together, traveling the world. Seeing everything she had dreamed to see.

Someday.

But contradicting that, contradicting everything, Cress was now planning her own escape. She had laid out her many computers—one patrolling the area around her, checking if there were any curious passerby who could help her (but it was futile, no one ever came this deep in the woods), one loading the coordinates she had saved of places she could go once she'd escaped, another downloading all her files into a drive, deleting themselves once they'd been extracted—and one, the most important one, holding all the code to access the alarms and wall enclosures.

Cress sat in the middle of all these screens and vaguely wondered if this operation would work.

She shook the thought away. _I am a criminal mastermind._ Cress forced the thought as hard as she could. _I am a criminal mastermind, and I am preparing my escape_.

She turned back to the screens. Tapping at the keyboard, she linked it to the last one, scrolling through the wall code. Skimming it. Finding the one piece that linked it all together, that changed everything.

Fingers fumbling over the keys, zipping over the code, she had found it. Cress sighed, feeling a loose strand of hair slip from her braid. She didn't bother tucking it back in. She deleted the link, and added a new command: release.

Almost immediately, she heard a shudder outside.

Cress rushed to the window to look, leaning against the windowsill. Outside, the concrete wall had started creaking open, shaking the wildlife around it. The beautiful trees and moss that had grown over the wall cracks over time. Cress winced.

Then she whirled back to the screen. _Okay, wall down. Laser beams to go_.

But before she could skim through the other batch of code, a ping sounded at her shoulder. Twisting in her chair, Cress sought out the connection to the first screen, and linked the keyboard to it. Then she wheeled her chair back around to read the notification:

1 UNKNOWN VEHICLE ENTERING: "CRESCENT MOON'S ENCLOSURE."

WITHIN 2.3 MILES OF ENCLOSURE WALLS. WILL SET OFF ALARMS.

CONTAINS 2 DEVICES: A STATE OF THE ART TRACKER, TAMPERED CODING.

A TABLET. DESCRIPTIONS FOR THIS DEVICE DO NOT REGISTER ON SYSTEM.

Cress gulped. Spinning back to the last screen, she thought. Hard.

An unknown vehicle. Could that mean help?

But she was already so far in her escape.

She thought back to her childish dreams of someone coming to rescue her. A prince coming to sweep her off her feet.

And she gave in to them.

Cress moved with a sudden speed, nudging the keyboard back to its original place and tapping out commands with the flick of her fingers. The only sound in the silent room was that of her clicking fingers. She tricked the system, making it think the unknown vehicle was Sybil, Levana's assistant. She didn't visit often—but it was the only believable choice the system would account for.

Then she disabled the lasers, covering her tracks. When she was finished, Cress glanced at the clock. 10 minutes had passed—enough time for the vehicle to have entered the open enclosure. Her computer helpfully notified that the car was due to arrive in exactly 20 seconds.

Swinging out of her chair, she hurried out the door.

12…11….10

Every second felt as if it were crawling up her spine, agonizingly slow. Cress clenched her teeth and watched the wall.

….9…8…5….

The sound of a faulty engine stirred the air.

4…3….2…

Cress gulped.

The nose of a rusty old Jeep entered the enclosure, and she strained to catch a glimpse of the driver. No such luck—there was a dark tint to the window. It chugged onward, slow and steady, and when Cress thought she couldn't take it anymore the car stopped and the driver's door opened. She held back an exhilarated gasp.

The driver stepped out of the car. Cress grinned.

Then frowned.

Wait.

The shocking familiarity of his face startled her. This man… she knew him from somewhere.

Except that was impossible. She had never seen anyone other than Sybil.

He seemed to notice her shock, and grew more confident for it. Cress could tell.

Then he inclined his head, a self-satisfied smirk on his lips, and with a sudden rush of realization she knew.

 _Someday, my prince will come_.

Today, that would change. No more _someday_ s. No more wishing on stars.

Because this man was Carswell Thorne, a true criminal mastermind.


	3. Chapter 3

Levana Blackburn reclined in her chair at the head of the table, reveling in the stares of her colleagues—though, to call them colleagues was an overstatement. Levana worked with an entourage and her own followers, not equals. That was how it had always been done in the Blackburn family, and that was how she did it now.

"With our estimates, sales will go down in the next few weeks," her sales assistant droned on, pointing at a projection on the board. Levana looked down at her fingernails, folding them demurely in front of her. "However, the launch of Luna's new project will increase investment even higher. Only a small part of the Blackburn money will be sacrificed."

Levana curled her lip. Sacrificed. Such a delicate word. Waving her hand at all the people gathered around her, she dismissed them. "Thank you. That is all for now."

When the room had cleared, she turned to Sybil. Levana raised one eyebrow. "Any news from our little hacker?"

Sybil's gaze did not waver, and she crossed the room to stand beside her. Up close, the assistant was far more menacing, and Levana felt her lip curl with the closeness. "Well?"

"Crescent Moon is still in position," Sybil crooned, "and that—criminal"—at this point her face twisted into a snarl—"that you've recruited is already at the enclosure."

Levana nodded satisfactorily. Another pawn, under her control. All was going smoothly. Not to say she wouldn't miss the small, weak child—but really, her talents weren't of much use to her anymore. With the launch of Luna's new project, and Levana's new investment in the company, she would no longer have need of illegal ways to get her money.

And, better yet, when her investment in Luna was announced publicly, all suspicions of her "never having shown proof of involvement in business," as a late magazine had declared, would be gone. All those impertinent commoners would realize her power.

Pawns, all of them.

Sybil seemed to understand her mistress wished to be alone, and nodded coldly as she stalked out of the room. Sybil, with loyalty so strong there never was. Levana knew that her assistant, her _shadow_ , held no actual affection to her, but harbored a thirst for the power that lingered wherever Levana stepped—and she felt that was all the better. She did not want an assistant, the closest thing to a colleague she would allow, feeling any emotional support to her in any means.

That thirst for power would accomplish much more than affection ever could.

Taking a deep breath, Levana took out the files they had just been discussing, filled with recent media entries and documents of future possible new plan for investment had saved them thousands of dollars, and she watched with a smug satisfaction as she flipped through the graphs of the past few months.

Then she froze.

A slip of paper, words inked across it in scrawling font. A newspaper clipping, with a photo of her taped to the front page and the common accusations set against her. But that wasn't what had caught Levana's eye.

Printed in ink, for the entire world to see, was a photo of her dead niece.

 _ **Decided to add Levana's POV in here just a bit-but don't worry, I want to keep the spotlight on Thorne! He's such a fun character to write.**_

 _ **I think we all know who the dead niece is... but how shall it escalate from here?**_

 _ **Keep in mind that this is a Thorne story (cue title) so there won't be much of anyone else, except for Cress. i want to keep later ideas for later fics.**_

 _ **-artemisianfire**_


	4. Chapter 4

Cress cracked open the window of her RV, the sunlight greeting her with a blinding brightness. Squinting, she adjusted the blinds before pulling up her chair, falling down into it and leaning her elbows on the windowsill.

The small cactus on the sill outside looked healthy. If not as prickly as ever. Cress smiled faintly, imagining a conversation. _Why hello, Mr. Cactus. How are you?_

She let her gaze wander over the courtyard. To the wall, the woods, the birds swooping in from the sky, the wonderful woodland creatures that came into her enclosure in the morning, and…

A rusty Jeep parked right in the middle of the grass.

The events of the day before rushed to her.

Kicking herself up, Cress nearly flipped herself out the window, pushing her chair away and scrambling up. She scurried to yank the blinds down, the crash that followed only blankly registering in her mind. She was muddled, floating, immobile.

Oh, stars.

She'd nearly forgotten.

No, not forgotten. She had been aware of it, vaguely, of the fact that something had been different since she woke up an hour ago. She'd been trying to figure it out, over breakfast, over watching soap operas on the net, over reading her favorite (her only) novels for the hundredth time-and now she remembered.

Stars, how had she forgotten?

Maybe it wasn't real. After all, the events yesterday had happened in a daze. Maybe she'd imagined it all. Maybe she was still imagining that Jeep, resting under the overlay of trees. Right in the middle of her enclosure.

Cress tried to recall what happened, exactly. Thorne had driven in the enclosure, while she had been conducting a plan she had been working on for days. Weeks. Hours. That she knew. She had the exact code for it in her secure laptop.

And then she ran out of the RV. That she knew. She remembered having to shut down the system and stop the back, stop everything, and repairing the broken code in a bustle of activity, peering out the window as she had. Then disregarding her shoes waiting for her at the steps, running down them to greet him. Or to stare at him. Frankly, Cress remembered doing both.

Then he'd introduced himself, as if she hadn't known who he was already, and he'd explained that he was a criminal on the run from the government, and that his crew had bailed him out, and that now he was alone and without anyone to rely on. Actually, he was like her-without the constant supply of food from her mistress, of course.

And of course Cress had offered him to stay, and he had retreated into his Jeep with a loaf of bread and some water-just a few of Cress's provisions she was prepared to share with someone she barely knew. Sybil's visits were becoming later and later.

And that had been all. Cress blinked the remnants of sleep away, rubbing her eyes and staring up at the ceiling. She'd been kneeling without even realizing it, and she set her hands on her knees and just stared up. And thought.

Despite his history being a criminal, and a liar, Cress believed him.

Despite his obvious playboy trait, and his flirty, cocky smile, Cress trusted him. As much a girl who'd been trapped her whole life could trust somebody, that is.

Burying her head in her hands, Cress wondered, for the thousandth time, whether she was really helping a criminal. The criminal mastermind of New York. Of the world.

And if she actually liked him.

* * *

She'd been checking up on her new project for Levana when an unusual notification popped up on her laptop. The one she'd coded to keep secure from her mistress.

It would've been normal, except for the fact that she couldn't receive notifications for it.

Squinting at the blinding screen, Cress swiveled her chair around to read it, the words barely registering:

500 KM ASTEROID HEADED FOR UPPER EAST COAST

ESTIMATED DATE: 1/31

ALERT TO EVACUATE INTO SOUTH OR MIDWEST EFFECTIVE UNTIL IMPACT

* * *

Cress ran down to the rusty automobile, flying past the well and her fort, struggling to slip on her shoes as she sped down the walk. Panting, she reached the car, and, pausing to shove her feet in her slippers, she knocked his window insistently.

No reply.

The worry building up even higher, Cress tucked a loose strand behind her ear before yanking the front door open. He hadn't even bothered to lock it. Which was obvious, because who would steal his things here? Surely not her.

Carswell Thorne was sleeping in the backseat, his arm draped over his stomach and his other set behind his head. He looked so peaceful in that moment that, in any other situation, Cress would've hesitated and stayed back. But this was no other situation.

"E-excuse me! Sir-" Cress bit back her words, not sure what to call him. She couldn't very well call him _Thorne_ , that was too familiar. But Carswell was far too personal too.

"Please! Please wake up, something's happened-Please!"

Cress reached out and shook him lightly, holding her breath for a response.

Nothing.

A ring startled her, and Cress whirled around to see Carswell Thorne's strange-looking cell phone, perched on the edge of the passenger seat. A notification was lighting up the screen-the same exact notification Cress had just seen.

The fear rose to the back of her throat. This was a confirmation. A check for the scoreboard.

She was reaching for his cell when a sleepy yawn sounded behind her. Rustling, Thorne threw away the make-shift blanket, raising his arms in a stretch.

He noticed her mid-yawn.

"...Eurgh?"

"...No, Cress," she began, grabbing his phone and tapping for the notification. "And, sir, captain, I don't know what to call you, there's been an asteroid alert for all of the East Coast, and probably the whole world too, because there's an _asteroid_ headed for us, and we need to hurry up and get out of here because otherwise we'll die."

The words had tumbled out of her mouth in one breath, and she gasped for air as she showed him his phone's screen.

Gazing at it through bleary eyes, Thorne didn't seem to comprehend all of it until he'd read the alert for the fifth time.

"Oh, stars."

"...No, an asteroid."

"That's not what I mean." Dragging his hand over his cheek, Thorne seemed to be struggling to shake himself out of a stupor. "This changes everything. Aces. Why did this have to change everything?"

Cress stared. "Tho-sir? Why does this-"

"Thorne is fine." He didn't pay attention to her words, running his fingers through his hair worriedly. "Stars above, I have the worst luck."

"...Sir-Thorne! We need to get out of here."

"Way to state the obvious."

She tugged her hair out from under her feet, tossing it behind her shoulder. Frustrated. She was undeniably frustrated. It was a feeling she had never really experienced before, being alone in the woods. She didn't think she liked it.

"This is serious, sir. I mean-Thorne."

"I'm never gonna get out of this mess, am I?" He groaned, leaning back and staring out the window into the courtyard. "Stars. Why did I sign up for this?"  
Cress bit her lip, the curiosity starting to overtake her, but shook it away. Questions could come later. "We have two weeks to prepare. Only two weeks."

"In two weeks I'll be dead," he grumbled.

"Captain, this is serious!"

"Captain. I like that." He finally turned to her, a faint spark igniting at the name. "Where did you hear that?"

Cress waved her hands vaguely, unsure about how this had to do with anything. "That's what your crew called you, right? Captain?" She had found out through hacking numerous secure Carswell Thorne fanpages.

"...Right," he affirmed, pointing a finger at her approvingly. "That is exactly what they called me. After cadet, but that's unimportant."

"Captain! An asteroid's headed-"

"I know." His jaw set, and Cress realized he had been purposely teasing her before. Now, his eyes held a hard glint, a determined light.

In a rush, Cress realized who she was dealing with.

"What's the estimated date again?" He didn't give her time to answer. "Two weeks. On the 31st of January. That's not that far away."

"But enough to prepare for." Cress added, relieved that he was finally taking charge.

"Nice assessment. Right, we'll have to figure out a way to escape, first. Which I'm assuming you already know?"

"Yes." It had taken her forever to form the code and find the chink, but she had done it. "We'll have to be discreet, though. The system already recognized one breach, and it'll be trying to amend for it. I have to tweak the code a bit to fit those changes."

"Right. That. You do that, and I'll help. With packing. And other stuff." He seemed to struggle to think for a second, and then he snapped, his eyes lighting up. "I can cook! So you have more time in your hands to tweak that code."

"Oh, no, it doesn't take that long-"

"I've learned how to make delicious food in the field, Princess. I can handle cooking for a hacker."

Cress wasn't sure what he meant by that, but she nodded reluctantly anyway.

"Thanks."

That was all she could find the urge to say, and it was good that she'd kept it short, because in the next moment both of them seemed to realize they were crouched in the backseat of a car together.

 **Sorry for the quick ending!**


End file.
